Out with the old, in with the new.

Ticked two jobs off the list today by making the most of the cold snap and pruning the apple trees then going on and pruning/managing the twisted willow tree. I had feared it was getting too large for the area it was in, and the wind was whipping it about a lot. Turns out that the wind had indeed been busy and one of the larger boughs was split longitudinally.

It makes me smile that we brought it back as a sapling in the back of Michelle's A4 and now it stands the same height as the lamppost. The tree was spurred into three from the base when we put it in and the first of the three spurs was cut off some years ago and was about 2" diameter I remember and I took it off with a tenon saw. Today required hatcheting off small branches, then bow-sawing off larger ones before firing up the chainsaw to take the last main part off, which was 5-6" diameter.

Next up was processing all the wood. I worked progressively and first of all thinned back the canopy branches into wood for pea-poles, wood for kindling and then the thinner canopy twigs. The twigs were then baled up with Michelle's help to dry before being used for either kindling or for fencing/windblocks.

Using a piece of sycamore trunk as a chopping block I was able to go through the small stuff quite quickly with the Granfsors Bruks hatchet. Finally it was a case of firing the chainsaw up and logging the main spur for firewood.

A satisfying day.

Fork Handles

Handles for forks.
I'd snapped mine on my inherited (from my Grandpa) fork a while back, and it was somewhat annoying gardening without a good fork.
A year and a bit back I'd also cut the twisted willow in the front back and had a large staff sized piece seasoning in the greenhouse. I took advantage of the sunny afternoon to crack on with the job and so armed with a small wood saw (out of shot) a billhook and my penknife I set to the piece of willow.

The small piece to the left was cut from the bottom and would become the handle. The bark was nicely dry as you can see. So, after a good while of using the billhook as a drawknife I had a length of willow clean and free of bark.

Next up was to saw the top (large) end back to roughly the right diameter for the handle and then mark up what needed rebating so the handle would fit nicely. I also cut down the handle length, shaved and trimmed it to fit in the rebate.
At the end of the day, after a quick scrubbing over with some scotchbrite the fork looked like this-

I've collected up the shavings and cut offs to have a small fire with, and I shall use that fire to heat the fork lower up to form around the slightly bendy bottom end of the handle. For that though I shall have to wait for the neighbours to get the washing in!